Majda Gama

East End Aubade

Dawn comes to Old Street down from a scabrous sky;
patches of bright new skin over the George & Dragon

over the Spread Eagle, over this flat above the tattoo shop;
its sign, prick, a simple spike of neon casts a red glare

upwards through single-glazed window panes,
their transparency wavy with scum, upwards to

faded Edwardian floorboards, checkered with empty cans
of Stella, upwards to us where walls that weathered the blitz

wear punk-rock 7 inches; a cat called Pogo, after
the manic dance of the ‘77 punks, broods over us all.

My man is a roman candle, pale from shift work & excess
he is the only natural light, he is soft in his sleep.

The end of time is inked on his arm (my evil rose
to meet it) the gates of hell outlined on one ropy calf;

Dawn comes, but it is false.

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Majda Gama is a Beirut born, Saudi-American poet based in the Washington, D.C. area where she has roots as a DJ and activist. Her poetry has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Cordite, The Fairy Tale Review, Hunger Mountain, Nimrod, The Normal School, RHINO, Slice, Wildness and is forthcoming from an anthology of love poems by poets of Arab heritage edited by Hala Alyan and Zeina Hashem Beck. Majda is a Pushcart and Best New Poets nominee, a runner up in the 2019 RHINO Founder’s Prize, a 2020 New Issues Poetry Prize finalist and recently served as a poetry editor at Tinderbox Poetry Journal.